Posted by sean at l37-167.datanet.nyu.edu on October 19, 2001 at 17:59:14:
I just saw "From Hell" ... I guess they were going for the 'spirit' of Alan Moore. Does that mean he's dead? If so, he's certainly spinning in his grave.
Now, I understand the need to condense and change for movies. But to assign actions to arbitrary characters that significantly change them and cut important motivations and such, opting instead for lame love story only matched in lameness by the 'mystery'.
I hope they at least paid for Alan Moore's flowers and dinner first...
The one exception (I swear) was Heather Graham who reminds us that it's not that she can't act, it's just that she can't do comedy. But I must say, I scoffed at the idea of casting her as an aging, ugly, British prostitute, but she was the only thing that made the movie better than "The Last Castle".
"Hey, I like Alan Moore, but you know what it could use? More cliches. We can just put them in in the place of all the subtlety. It'll have the same effect, right?" -- one Hughes brother to t'other.